Maritime union hopes film on 2009 pirate attack will raise awareness

After Navy SEAL snipers killed three Somali pirates during the dramatic rescue of Capt. Richard Phillips off the Horn of Africa in 2009, the merchant mariner became an overnight star, lauded as a hero for sacrificing himself to save his cargo ship's crew.

Now, officials with the Baltimore-based International Organization of Masters, Mates & Pilots — the union that represents licensed merchant mariners — hope Phillips' story, and the Oct. 11 release of a big-budget film based on his high-seas ordeal, will help them raise awareness about their work in Baltimore.

It is here that Phillips and many other ship captains from around the world train in two massive, $30 million simulators that not only prepare them to navigate and dock large cargo ships, but also to respond to terrorist attacks and attempted pirate hijackings, union officials say.

"We see [the film] as a vehicle to promote an industry that in many areas around the country is invisible," said union president Donald Marcus, seated in his office at the union's hotel-like headquarters and training complex near BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport.

Even commuters passing right by the facility on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway don't know it's there, and the dearth of knowledge has left the union and its members with few advocates at a time when federal belt-tightening threatens their industry, union officials said.

"What the Somali pirates couldn't take away, Congress could," said Marcus, citing cuts under sequestration to the federal subsidies that buoy the industry.

On a recent morning at the training facility, instructor David Leech assisted trainee Patrick Ebberwein through a simulation of bringing a cargo ship into the port of Singapore.

"If you can get up by that third crane, that'd be good," Leech said, and Ebberwein, 20, an apprentice river pilot in Savannah, Ga., began calling out directions to the crew.

The room where Ebberwein trains resembles a captain's deck in a cargo ship. It's located on a steel platform at the center of a room surrounded by concave walls, onto which projectors shine a computerized landscape.

The projections are so realistic that a simulation of hurricane-force waves rocking the imaginary ship back and forth can make those inside the deck sway and feel as if they may fall over — even though the room and its steel frame aren't moving at all.

"You can pretty much get a vibe of when things are going wrong or when things are going right," Ebberwein said.

The union operation, which has been around for decades and routinely pumps millions of dollars into the simulators to keep them on the cutting edge, is paid for through dues withheld by employers from union members' paychecks, officials said.

It operates 232 hotel-like residential units for the captains and other vessel officers who arrive to train in the simulators and classrooms.

Officials say the union's operations not only support the global shipping industry, but also contribute to the Baltimore economy, bringing hundreds of foreign nationals and U.S. seamen to the region on a regular basis. Recent reservations at the training facility have come from Kenya and Brazil, Egypt and Sri Lanka.

Phillips, who will be played by Tom Hanks when the new Sony film "Captain Phillips" hits screens Oct. 11, trained at the facility many times, officials said.

Steven Werse, the union's secretary-treasurer and a ship captain who has traded assignments with Phillips, said he can't wait to see the film.

Phillips' unarmed ship, which had a 19-member crew, was hijacked by a group of four pirates in April 2009, leading to a five-day standoff with U.S. naval forces that turned the 17,000-ton container ship Maersk Alabama into a symbol of the ongoing fight between international shipping interests and rogue bands of Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean.

During the standoff, Phillips entered a life boat with the pirates to get them off the ship, where his crew remained. One pirate in need of medical attention surrendered, and the three others were killed by Seal snipers after Phillips' life was deemed to be in danger.

Some of the ship's crew have challenged the official narrative of what happened on the ship before and after the pirates boarded, pointing blame at Phillips for not taking a course farther off the Somali coast after receving warnings of pirate activity in the area.Marcus called such claims"sour grapes and Monday morning quarterbacking."

Werse said all captains who transit pirate waters see attacks as an inherent risk of the job, but Phillips deserves the attention he's receiving for how he handled the situation.

"Some people are born to greatness. Others have it thrust upon them," Werse said. "This was thrust upon Richard, and I think he handled it with a lot of grace and good taste."

Union officials hope the movie also will help them in the halls of Congress.

The federal Maritime Security Program, which subsidizes many U.S.-flagged ships and thus the livelihood of the nation's merchant mariners, has seen its budget slashed in the past two years, officials say. The program sustains a commercially viable, U.S.-flagged shipping fleet that is required to serve the government during war and in other times of need, according to the U.S. Maritime Administration, which administers it.

These civilian-owned ships delivered 95 percent of the nation's war supplies to foreign battlegrounds in Iraq and Afghanistan, union officials say. They also deliver aid packages around the world — Phillips' Maersk Alabama was delivering food aid to Kenya when hijacked.

In 2012, with a federal subsidy of $186 million, the Maritime Security Program ran a $12 million surplus, leading a belt-tightening Congress to authorize a diminished subsidy budget of $174 million. Then, across-the-board sequestration cuts trimmed the program's budget by another 10 percent, union officials said, to about $157 million.

The cuts cannot be applied across the program's fleet — slim operating margins and shipping regulations wouldn't allow every ship in the fleet to take a trim. Instead, the cuts, Marcus and others said, would force a third of the ships in the program, or 20 of 60 current vessels, to be removed from operation.

Union officials and many legislators, including Maryland's U.S. Sen. Barbara Mikulski, chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and U.S. Rep. C.A. "Dutch" Ruppersberger, ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, have criticized the cuts as a threat to national security and a trim that will cost the government more in the end by forcing the Navy to conduct cargo transfers on its own.

"The likely cost to the government to replicate just the vessel capacity provided by the MSP dry cargo vessels would be $13 billion," according to a March letter from ranking members of the Committee on Armed Services supporting a full budget appropriation for the program. Ruppersberger and U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings both signed the letter.

"Sequestration is punishing a program that is saving the government money," Werse said.

Still, with Republicans in Congress holding fast to sequestration, the Maritime Security Program isn't likely to see its former budget restored any time soon. Congress remains locked in a budget battle over a continuing resolution just to fund the federal government at current levels through the end of the year.

The result will be removing 20 MSP ships from service, union officials said — a loss for the Merchant Marines, but also for the Baltimore region.

Toys "R" Us stores will be taking back used baby products — cribs, high chairs, car seats, strollers and more — starting this weekend in exchange for discounts on new items, an annual event that has helped remove more than a million potentially unsafe items from the marketplace.

Two of Baltimore's most prominent developers want to build an arena on piers in the Inner Harbor, a new idea that has revived perennial debate about how to replace the aging arena on the city's west side.

Readers submit photos and information on employees who have recently been promoted, hired or honored at area businesses. Select photos will be published in the Maryland Business section of Tuesday editions of The Baltimore Sun. Caption size is limited and only photos are accepted in this...

Advocates for programs spending state dollars on stem cell research or investment in technology companies were nervous about what Gov. Larry Hogan's budget would hold for them, given warnings of "strong medicine" to cure fiscal woes.